The Film

About Microphone

It all started when I was wandering the streets of Alexandria like a regular tourist. The city had been as unfamiliar to me as it is to many Cairenes who are used to spending a week or two there in the summer, to escape the heat of Egypt’s capital and to take advantage of the cool north breeze on the shores of the Mediterranean. At first sight, I was fascinated by the writings on the concrete blocks lining the corniche: a battle of drawings and words; some urging you to behave piously, others inviting you to use your mind, some inciting you to revolt, and others advising you to veil etc.. One specific graffiti caught my attention, it said “Choose your itinerary, choose your fate”. I immediately started asking my Alexandrian friends about the author of the graffiti, and to my surprise I found out that it was a 19 year-old girl. She and her friends roam the streets at night to paint the words and ideas that come to their mind, and which I personally found very insightful.

It was then that I had the idea of making a film about the lives of Alexandria’s underground artists. I started meeting painters, independent filmmakers, and skateboarders. We discussed the idea of the film at length and I found myself in a dilemma: should I make a documentary or a fiction film?

I settled on the latter. My idea was to make a fiction film which consisted in a journey in the city’s streets, alleys and roofs, in which Khaled—its protagonist—takes the viewer by the hand through different stops that include peoples, subcultures and artistic creations, which all exist in the city but are often invisible to us. The journey is based on the actual stories of the artists as perceived and told by them.

I soon learned that there were about 30 metal bands in Alexandria, dozens of hip hop groups, and dozens of bands making original fusions between Alexandrian and world music. The idea of the film thus expanded.

I chose to make an independent low-budget film, with a crew of no more than 8 people. I decided to use a camera that was never used before for such a film, which is Canon D7, a photo camera that shoots video. This option allowed us the advantage of filming in the street without being noticed, which helped us capture daily life in the city and in places where it would have been impossible to use more elaborate shooting equipments.

We spent months in the city among musicians, digital filmmakers, and visual artists. We filmed them doing their work and the film alternates between their real life stories and Khaled’s story. Our main character finds himself in a journey along which he discovers alternative lives he could not have possibly encountered while sitting behind his desk at his routine job.

We used the natural lighting of our locations to achieve some visual credibility, along with photographic lenses that gave an image close enough to the eye’s vision. We did not alter the way people dressed, and tried as much as possible to depict the colors of the city with as little intervention as possible. The camera had also to be hand held most of the time to achieve the same spontaneous feel and to allow the actors room for improvisation.

The film’s soundtrack is wholly based on the works of the bands that appear or are mentioned in the film. The music can be found online and is free to download. We thought it was best not to have any theme made specially for the film, as I believe that what the bands have produced in the last few years is largely sufficient to back the drama. And since Microphone is meant to speak about different ways of expression, and about those who chose alternative means to live and express their beliefs—as opposed to what they have been taught by their relatively conservative societies—we sought to pass the microphone to the youth of Alexandria to say what they want and tell their untold stories. Those young people have their own worlds that have so far gone unnoticed by people including myself, until I found myself in Alexandria making—with its independent artists— a Microphone.

3 Responses to The Film

Sometimes you feel like there is hope; i got this feeling, thank you all…
2 years ago, i’ve been watching “Once” which is an irish low-budget musical movie with Oscar best song, and as a fan of independent and short movies, i regualry watch “fel kadr” on “O tv”, i got a dream that someday i may watch an egyptian movie with egyptian culture that resembles the creativity and awsomeness of “Once”, and thanks to “Microphone” my dream come true… 😉